Candid discusion of the board's cost and limitations

[kath]

I'm happy to pay a few $$ a year for a great forum and ability to post photos

I also follow a handful of forums, including the Trailmanor site, and the best ones have tiered access. One of the best, IMHO, is the Pentax Forums (www.pentaxforums.com), also a tiered system and well worth the few bucks I pay.  They offer various ways to increase your personal photo storage. Some of the ways involve a little more money and some don't (as in participation strategies).  Another is a boating community (www.c-brats.com), whose photos have helped me with technical problems again and again. 

I have a Flickr account but hate that extra step. 10, 12, or 15 $$ a year would be worth it not to have to go through that damnable process. 

The 30-day free access found on other sites seems to work great. You get some time to check it out and, if it meets your needs, you pay a few $$ to join. You can barely buy lunch for that kind of money. 

Finally, I find any forum to be less useful without photos. Especially for mods and other technical help. 

[swbc150]

I belong to many other type of forums and None require a paid membership.
But, they do accept donations from Members, either by paypal or mail-in-check.
Some even offer a once life-time donation and it isn't much at $35.
All the donations they receive go back into the forum, to help with maintaining the site or other upgrades.

Photo's are limited in size to 640x480 max if using the sites attachment bar, no size limit if you link the Photo.

No guest are allowed to post, you must be a Member.

[whoofit]

I like Sushi.

[dh50]

[quote source="/post/11308/thread" timestamp="1432460074" author="@whoofit"]I like Sushi.[/quote]Huh?  Is this one those 'quality posts' Pintripper was referring to?  Keep it 'shellfish', WF!  (rofl)

[whoofit]

[p]I enjoy this site enough to join for a modest fee if needed. I have learned enough here to justify some spending.

Not really bothered by using Photobucket and the like but can see how some would be. I've seen what happens to sites when businesses wrangle control. Everything get heavily moderated to a point of sterility. Any conversation about mistakes made by the company get squished hard and fast. Some may want this but I don't. Just like I don't want to only see high praises of the product. Who learns anything that way?

I also would not like to see a tiered membership. I guess if the main mission of the forum was to sell and support Livin'Lite products it wouldn't be so bad but that's not how I interpret Seans mission statement in the other thread. Not really a sales/support site where people are coming for expert answers but a social network where they come to be part of a group of peers.

So, a membership for free or for fee. This is the definition of donation. Problem is donations are not long term sustainable. Plus there are plenty of folks gladly willing to let others always pay their way for them. This is more and more evident in our society lately.

For me, I'll continue to use Photobucket unless the forum finds a better solution. If a donation button appears I will use it to pay my way. If a corporate entity gains control I'll probably fade away.[/p][p]
[/p][p]Cloud storage sites rock, really. How else do you get your photos linked when using Android 100 miles away from your home PC? Usually you will want to reuse those pictures in the future anyways... I have several accounts on the web.







[/p]

[leslie]

Would it be helpful to know how much money in total that we need? Is it hundreds of $ or thousands of $$?

[daplumbr]

This forum is simply incredible. As a source of ideas, support for problem solutions, networking among members, and entertainment (you know who you are), this forum is the best I've used on the Internet. And the photos are worth the proverbial 1000 words. I think the basic use (reading and posting text) needs to be free for those starting out. Pay sites can be a real block to new members. I'm up for learning how to use external hosting for photos. I already spend time on attachments I post to get them to as small a file size as possible. Useable photos need not be more than around 50KB. Much more than that is a waste of 1's and 0's on a forum.  The Land Cruiser forum I belong to (IH8MUD) has a voluntary pay scheme that seems to work for supporting that site, along with lots of vendors who find it valuable to support the fanaticism found on that forum. One concern I have is that if this site establishes user-pay, and if there is still a limit on the overall site storage (albeit larger), we'll eventually hit that too? All in all, Sean and the mods deserve a round of applause for the admin work and keeping us in line and I'll do what they think best for site support. My bottom line is to attempt to keep this forum free to users by making it as easy as possible to use external hosting of attachments, by using sale of banner ads to a very well targeted demographic "delivered" to their business, and by offering a voluntary donation option.

[tinkeringtechie]

I don't think there is any need to charge anyone for the forum since it pays for itself through the ads that proboards puts on each page. I think that the image issue can be solved just by using a plugin that posts the images to a free service instead of using the proboard "attachments". I just sent one possible plugin to Sean and hopefully we can try it out to see if it might solve the issue. If that doesn't fix it then I think LL should foot the bill since this forum is essentially free advertising and customer support for them.

[shovelhead]

No problem kicking in some money to keep the wheels turning, and make improvements.  I see this site as a wealth of information well worth a few bucks.

[charliem]

[quote source="/post/11394/thread" timestamp="1432645742" author="@tinkeringtechie"]I don't think there is any need to charge anyone for the forum since it pays for itself through the ads that proboards puts on each page. I think that the image issue can be solved just by using a plugin that posts the images to a free service instead of using the proboard "attachments". I just sent one possible plugin to Sean and hopefully we can try it out to see if it might solve the issue. If that doesn't fix it then I think LL should foot the bill since this forum is essentially free advertising and customer support for them.[/quote]TT,

I agree. I sent Sean a note on postimage.org that PEIslander found. Reading their info and your post suggests that postimage.org is also a simple plugin to PB. I guess you're saying there may be others. Don't know how these guys make their money; maybe advertising. From their web site it looks like the user interface (us owners) would be very similar to PB's attachment process. Problem solved.

On value to LL, I like to think we are more than an advertising or customer support function. We are a huge customer feedback asset. Yes we find and solve problems, but we also represent what the customer base wants, either standard or optional. IOW, product improvement ideas. I think, from the evolution we've seen, they really are reading this forum. As for LL paying for the forum, I agree it would be nice, but any hint of company influence/control will kill our authenticity. There's a general perception that company supported sites censor complaints. I think Scott T. understands this, but I'd rather not even get close to an appearance. Let's hope the plugin thing works.  

[tinkeringtechie]

[quote source="/post/11401/thread" timestamp="1432648763" author="@charliem"]On value to LL, I like to think we are more than an advertising or customer support function. We are a huge customer feedback asset. Yes we find and solve problems, but we also represent what the customer base wants, either standard or optional. IOW, product improvement ideas. I think, from the evolution we've seen, they really are reading this forum. As for LL paying for the forum, I agree it would be nice, but any hint of company influence/control will kill our authenticity. There's a general perception that company supported sites censor complaints. I think Scott T. understands this, but I'd rather not even get close to an appearance. Let's hope the plugin thing works.  
[/quote]

I agree on both points (feedback and independence). If the existing plugin doesn't work I can create one that meets our specific needs. I'm not sure when I'd be able to get to it though... I've got a pretty busy summer.

[admin]

I think I may have been a bit unclear in my original post so I want to take a moment to clear things up.

1. I NEVER plan to make this site a paid for site as a whole. IF there is ever an option for a paid subscription it will purely be to support the board on a voluntary basis and it may include an additional section/board for members only. Honestly we dont have to have a true subscription at all. I could add a "Supporting Member" tag and open up the ability to donate to the forum. Then anyone that choses to donate can at least be recognized for their contribution if they desire. Then we can maintain any upgrades as long as there is money in the account.

2. Currently the ads on this site are added by ProBoards and zero revenu comes to me. This is a necessary evil since we have their "free" forum.

3. Our free forum came with 200Mb of storage, honestly I thought we would have run out of space far sooner than we did.

4. ProBoards offers "Upgrades" a la carte. So if we as a group decide we don't want ads, then we can do that, but it's going to cost about $6 per month. If we want to increase our internal storage we can do that as well. ProBoards offers options that range from 500Mb per month which costs $3, on up to 10Gb per month at $73.50. I have no interest in making money on this site so I have no problem being entirely open about any of the options. My personal opinion is that ProBoards overcharges for their storage costs and that even if we limit attachments to a relatively small size its still going to be easy to eat up a large amount of space. Keep in mind that the middle of the road plan for 1200Mb is $9 and 1600Mb is $12.60. If we limited every attachment to .5 - 1 Mb we still could eat up 1200Mb fairly quickly. Then, lets say we upgraded the storage, what happens if/when the money dries up. Modestly we could have a $12 - $15 dollar average monthly cost between removing ads and upgrading storage and that isnt a lot of money over a year. However once it starts, it would be hard to stop. If we stop the increased storage, then our posted content goes away. There is no ideal solution.

5. Scott has in the past stated that he supports our efforts and would be happy to add some financial support. However, I don't know how that would work logistically, nor have I received replies to the last few emails sent to him. I assume he is quite busy and it is easy to overlook an email but as it stands I haven't heard anything about any actual support at this time. As time allows I may reach out again.

6. There may be other options such as the suggestion for using postimage.org as a plugin service. I havent had time to do much more than skim their site, however they have next to no privacy policy or terms of use posted. In my experience this is a red flag. I personally want to know exactly who retains ownership of my content and how its stored/used. In this internet culture we give up so much for "free" services that its just part of doing business, but I for one want to know exactly what I'm giving up. If people want the postimage plugin added I'm sure I can make that happen, but please know who you are working with prior to giving up your content.

7. This all boils down to want vs need and our desire for convenience. I know how I'm going to manage my personal content so I'm happy to try and implement other options for the community as my time allows.

[admin]

Update...postimage.org "Add image to post" button has been enabled if users want to try it out.

[kath]

Just uploaded this image via the new postimage button in my post under Camplite Trailers. Simple, quick, easy. No signup. I like it. I agree with Sean that their documentation is very skimpy, so who knows where these photos are going and who owns them, etc. I sent them an email asking a few questions of that nature. For now, posting photos of my CL for technical purposes, I guess I don't care where they go. Anything else, I'll be more wary.

PS:  I also like that, when you click on the photo you get a larger version. Good for clarity. 


[a href="http://postimg.org/image/dyv7lv03b/"]
[img style="max-width:100%;" src="http://s23.postimg.org/dyv7lv03b/image.jpg"][/a]

[whoofit]

 Ooooh, I LIKE this new tool. Click on the image to enlarge and scroll down!! Now, what was the subject again?....